The girl was white, her eyes strained wide in dark circles of fatigue. Streakings of her fair body showed through the torn dress. I saw her check and stumble, putting out her hands blindly, overburdened by her hair. Remembering what importance Trastevera had attached to this returning, I looked about for her, ready to serve or see. Before I could reach her, up came Ravenutzi from his pot of coals and anvil of flint stone down where the rush of the cascade covered the tinkle of his hammers. I could not help noting the likeness between him and Trastevera as he came, putting off his smith’s apron ready to her use like a proffered tool. Some nods, I think, a gesture or two of Trastevera’s, were all that passed between them. Some essential maleness leapt up in him at the motions of those small talking hands, and took command of the situation. I found myself running with the women at his word to spread skins for the Ward to rest upon, and ordering the children in two lines to some show of ceremonial welcome. There were some young brothers of hers in that band, and as she kissed them heartily I saw tears stealing, and realized how young she was and how hard a thing she had undertaken. She stood with a palm behind her flat against a pine for support, overtired and wanting her mother, no doubt, who was not allowed to come to her. Finally the women took her away to rest.
In all this I had never seen Ravenutzi show to so great advantage. When we were quite alone Trastevera put out her hand to him as she did not often in the presence of Outliers.
“Kinsman,” she said, and it was the first time I had heard her call him that, “I owe you thanks for this.”
She meant more than that he had contrived some warmth for what must otherwise have seemed to Zirriloë a cold returning. She was thankful that it had been his wrinkles and streaked grayness to meet the Ward rather than the hot eyes and shining curls of Mancha.
“I do not know how it is,” said she, “I never pitied myself for being the Ward, but somehow this pink girl seems to need to be pitied.”
“Any bond,” said Ravenutzi, “will wear at times,” and said it with a wistful back-stroke of self-commiseration that caused me to think swiftly of several things. I reflected that in his own place among the Far-Folk he must have been more of a man than the Outliers conceded to any smith. Next, that the condition of tame cat, which his hostageship incurred, pressed more heavily on him than they were in the habit of thinking. Also I thought of the tall woman, but I did not deliver the comforting reassurance about her which came readily to my tongue. There was so intimate and personal a quality in his brief surrender to our sympathy that it made the mention of another woman an intrusion. It began to seem likely that she could not be so much to him as he to her. That would account both for her anxiety not to have him know of her inquiry, and for his not having mentioned her to Trastevera.